1. IntroductionThere is no controversy in the matter that the entire world has become a global village and as such knowledge plays an indispensable role in almost every organization to achieve competitive advantage. Knowledge is often asserted as power and based upon this, it can be said that managing this knowledge in a systematic manner is the ultimate key to power for every organization. In this ever-changing business world, the need of the organization is to shift from conventional resources to knowledge resources. In current scenario knowledge is considered to be a strategic resource of organization. Indeed, knowledge has been considered as one of the highly valued assets and commodities of every organization (Bhojaraju, 2005; Hegazy and Ghorab, 2014). As the domain of business has become more competitive in recent days so organizations need to face innumerable challenges and contingency situation which accentuates the need of implementing knowledge strategy in an effective manner. In this respect, the role of knowledge management has recently gathered much importance for survival of enterprises.
Now, to implement knowledge management strategy successfully in an organization, the knowledge managers need to have an idea about organizational climate or culture which is compatible in selecting the best knowledge management approach. An appropriate organizational climate is one that fosters sharing or dissemination of knowledge among employees in organization to a large extent. This particular paper is intended to explore the impact of organizational climate on knowledge management.2. ObjectiveThough number of studies has taken place on knowledge management and its practices on different organizations, but practically very limited study has been conducted with regard to impact of organizational climate on knowledge management. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to find out from relevant literature whether organizational climate has any impact upon knowledge management .3.
Review methodologyThe study reviewed the literature from Google Scholar, Science Direct, Springer Link, Jstor, Emerald Insight and others. The keywords Knowledge, Explicit Knowledge, Tacit Knowledge, Knowledge Management, Organizational Climate etc. were used to search the titles and abstract of the papers. A total of 35 studies were consulted for the current review study.
4. Concept of Knowledge, Knowledge Management and Organizational ClimateKnowledge basically comprises of data, information, experiences etc. which provides a framework to generate further information and experience. Davenport and Prusak (1998, p.
5) defined knowledge as “Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knower”. Knowledge is basically subdivided into two categories- Tacit Knowledge and Explicit Knowledge. The knowledge which can be easily articulated is termed as “explicit knowledge” while “tacit knowledge” is something which is difficult to articulate and hence cannot be transferred easily (Polanyi, 1966, pp.
3-25 ). Explicit knowledge is a formal kind of knowledge that can be expressed precisely in the form of data, manuals, textbooks or certain scientific formulae (Ajayi and Opeke, 2017). Tacit knowledge is that type of knowledge which is imbibed in the minds, behaviour and perception of employees in any organization (Sthulman, 2012). Various researchers have defined knowledge management in different ways. Knowledge management is defined as an approach towards systematic, explicit and deliberate creation, renewal and application of knowledge in order to augment the knowledge-related efficacy of organization (Wiig, 1997). According to Karlsen and Gottschalk (2004), knowledge management is defined as a method in which the process of generating, capturing, sharing and understanding knowledge in an organization is improved. The concept of organizational climate was first introduced by Kurt Lewin who termed it as psychological atmosphere.
It is perceived to be a set of attributes prevalent in a working environment which directly or indirectly influences the behaviour of employees. Organizational climate implies the shared values, beliefs and work atmospheres that create significant impact upon the behaviour of employees (Long, 2000).5. Earlier Studies and Research GapOrganizational climate creates an impact upon knowledge management and it was evident that when an organization has greater degree of innovative and cooperative climate, the interaction among employees becomes favourable and thus the rate of knowledge sharing improves (Chen and Huang, 2007). Suitable organizational environment is needed for sharing and management of knowledge among the employees to create a synergic impact between knowledge of both employees as well as outside environment and the knowledge thus produces is rich in quality (Kohansal et al.
, 2013). Abzari and Abbasi (2011) conducted a research in which they studied the impact of organizational climate in the components of planned behaviour theory and opined that appropriate organizational climate should be prevalent for knowledge sharing in an organization. As far as tacit and explicit knowledge are concerned, tacit knowledge is regarded as valuable for an organization and thus individuals are not willing to share it easily (Osterloh and Frey, 2000). Sharing of tacit knowledge is highly dependent upon social interaction among individuals (Nonaka, 1994; Yang and Farn, 2006). Moreover, cooperative organizational climate leads to boost the trust level among employees and with higher level of internal trust employees have the tendency to share more of tacit knowledge for betterment of organizational purpose (Leana and Buren, 1999; Szulanski et al.
, 2004; Zaheer, Bill McEvily and Perrone, 1998; Lin, 2007). According to Ekore (2014), both explicit as well as tacit knowledge possess no value until and unless it is being deployed for enhancing organizational efficiency and thus successful knowledge transfer within the organization is essential. As opined by Polanyi (1966), tacit knowledge is something inherent to an individual and is difficult to express however it forms the basis of explicit knowledge. However, unlike tacit, explicit knowledge can be shared easily through books, manuals, video clips, databases, expert system and formal training (Pangil & Nasurddin, 2013). Hence, a clear research gap is there which indicates us to undertake further research to find out the relationship between organizational climate and knowledge management while considering the different organizational climatic factors impacting especially upon tacit knowledge sharing in particular and knowledge management as a whole. 6.
Relationship between Tacit Knowledge Sharing with Organizational ClimateFrom different surveyed literature certain factors have been identified which contributes to tacit knowledge sharing in an organization. Teamwork has been identified as one of the factors that encourages collaboration of individuals and sharing of tacit knowledge (Gonzalez & Martins, 2014). Moreover, teamwork is considered to be a new potentiality of an organization to gain the tacit knowledge from different personnel and as such create a suitable condition for knowledge management (Grant, 1997; Grant, 2001). Human related knowledge sharing which basically considers tacit knowledge requires an atmosphere of trust to share the knowledge (Choi et al., 2008; Hudcova, 2014; Barachini, 2009). According to Mooradian et al.
(2006), trust facilitates tacit knowledge sharing. Besides, leadership also plays a key role in tacit knowledge transfer and one’s leadership attributes helps in sharing knowledge in the entire organization (Swee, 2002). Nahapiet ; Ghoshal (1998), opined that a leader should foster relational, cognitive and structural dimensions of an organization in order to facilitate tacit knowledge sharing in which relational aspect indicates trust, respect and friendship among the individuals, cognitive implies effective communication and structural dimension indicates interactions among the employees. Findings of the study given by Roodbari et al (2016), shows that trust and motivation can develop the tacit knowledge sharing among the employees and as such organization should make an effort to increase the inherent capabilities and motivation of employees such as feeling of self-efficacy or sense of belongingness while sharing the knowledge. Indeed, motivation acts as a driving force in knowledge sharing as individuals are more concerned about what they will gain or lose in the process of sharing the valuable knowledge possessed by them. In a study entitled “Organizational climate and its influence on organizational commitment”, leadership, teamwork and motivation has been identified as some of the dimensions of organizational climate to examine its impact upon organizational commitment (Noordin et al., 2010). According to Koys ; DeCotiis (1991), trust has been identified as one of the organizational climate variables amongst others.
Trust is considered as one of the salient aspects of organizational climate (Hinds ; Pfeffer, 2003). Castro ; Martins (2010), also identified trust, leadership, teamwork as the dimensions of organizational climate. Thus, it clearly indicates that factors namely teamwork, trust, leadership and motivation which facilitates tacit knowledge sharing in an organization are also the determinants of organizational climate .
